Famous biracial, and black, people

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Photos:Famous biracial people

Actress Jennifer Beals, best known for her role in "Flashdance," is the daughter of an African-American businessman and an Irish Catholic educator.

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Photos:Famous biracial people

"My mother was of a darker complexion. ... My father was a white man," abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote in the autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave."

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Booker T. Washington, educator and champion of rights for blacks, was born to a black woman, Jane. She never named his white father, who was said to be a nearby planter.

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California Attorney General Kamala Harris is the first female, African-American and Asian-American lawyer for the state. Her mother is Indian, and her father is Jamaican-American.

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"My father's white, and my mother's black," former NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous told the Los Angeles Times in 2009. "There was always a conversation on race and racial exclusion in our household."

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Actress Maya Rudolph is the daughter of soul singer Minnie Riperton and songwriter Richard Rudolph. "I don't care for labels," she said in the HBO documentary "The Black List." "They're just kind of, forced."

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Lenny Kravitz is the son of Roxie Roker, who played Helen Willis on the TV sitcom "The Jeffersons," and NBC news producer Sy Kravitz. "I knew that my father physically looked different from my mother, but that wasn't an issue to me," Lenny Kravitz said on Oprah's "Master Class." "People look different."

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Actress Lisa Bonet, best known for her role as Denise Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World," is the daughter of a white Jewish mother and an African-American father.

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Actor Wentworth Miller is the son of a black father and white mother. "It's very easy to be the young Tom Cruise, because Hollywood knows what to do with you," he told People magazine in 2006. "But if you're someone who's bringing something slightly left of center to the table, you're not a sure thing."

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Actress Rashida Jones is the daughter of actress Peggy Lipton and record producer Quincy Jones, pictured here. On her identity, she remarked: "It's more of a challenge for other people than it is for me. I have no issues with my identity."

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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson described himself as "half-black and half-Samoan" to Vibe magazine in 1999. He is the son of wrestler Rocky Johnson and grandson to wrestler Peter Maivia, who was Samoan.

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Rapper Drake is the son of a black father and a white Jewish mother. "I'm all mixed up, and people embrace that," he told the Village Voice.

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James McBride, a journalist, jazz artist and National Book award winner, wrote about his mother in the memoir, "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother." When he asked his mother, who was an Orthodox Jew raised in Poland, whether he was white or black, she replied: "You're a human being. Educate yourself, or you'll be a nobody."

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Jasmine Guy, known for her role as Whitley Gilbert in "A Different World," was born to a mother of Portuguese descent and an African-American minister and Morehouse College instructor.

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Directors Albert and Allen Hughes are twin brothers who made "Menace II Society," "Dead Presidents" and "The Book of Eli." Their mother is of Armenian descent, and their father is African-American.

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Singer Faith Evans was born into music: She was raised by her grandmother and mother, a black blues singer. Her father was an Italian musician.

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Saul Hudson, more popularly known as the musician Slash, is the former lead guitarist for Guns N' Roses. His mother was a black American and his father a white Brit.

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Jamaican singer Bob Marley was born to a black Jamaican store owner and cook and a white British army captain.

British author Zadie Smith is the child of a Jamaican mother and a British father.

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Journalist Malcolm Gladwell is of Jamaican and Irish heritage. "I'm of mixed race," he told CNN in 2011, speaking of what happened when he let his hair grow. "The minute I began to look more like people's stereotype of a black male (and) have a big Afro, I got stopped by police, and when I went through Customs at the airport, I would always get pulled out. I was getting speeding tickets left and right; it was really kind of a striking transformation in the way the world viewed me."

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Actress and recording artist Jordin Sparks receives a kiss from her dad, former football player Phillippi Sparks, and mom, Jodi Sparks, at the premiere of "Sparkle."

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New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is the son of a white mother and black father. "You'd go places and get stares," he told Barbara Walters about growing up biracial. "If you were just with one of your parents, people would give you a double-take because something just didn't seem right."

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Television personality Kimora Lee Simmons is the daughter of a Japanese mother and a black American father. "I consider myself to be one of the black women in fashion who made it," she told New York magazine. "But black women don't look at me like that."

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U.S. President Barack Obama is the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.